Tell Me Again Why Obama Wants To Engage Iran

I saw Anderson Cooper's piece on 60 Minutes regarding torture in Iran this evening.

The piece largely concentrated on the plight of Ahmad Batebi who spent nearly a decade in Iran's Evin prison for participating in an anti-government demonstration. When Iranian authorities fired into the crowd, Batebi's photo was taken and ended up on the cover of The Economist:

They took me to a special prison for intelligence. And I was in solitary confinement for several months. After seven or eight months we went to court, but they didn’t tell me where we were going. I was blindfolded, and I thought this was just part of my questioning. They sat me in a room and opened my blindfold," Batebi told Cooper.

That's when a judge showed him The Economist. Batebi told Cooper it was the first time he had seen the magazine.

He says the judge told him, "With this picture, you have signed your own death sentence."

"He said, 'You have defaced the face of the Islamic Republic that is a representative of God on earth. You have defaced it around the world. And therefore you have to be sentenced to death.' It took less than three minutes," Batebi recalled.

So tell me again why Obama wants to engage Iran?

But it wouldn't be a 60 Minutes report without a "blame America first" component. Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said, "The work of human rights defenders worldwide is made so difficult and almost impossible in holding governments like Iran accountable and shaming them as long as we have torture in places like Guantanamo."

Ah yes, the United States which is so famous for amputating limbs, stonings and public hangings of those who offend our Republic.

Make no mistake about the regime President Obama wishes to engage. If it isn't evil then nothing is.